


Snapshots

by aliaoftwoworlds



Series: Tales from Tolsar [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Author is Bitter, Civil War Team Iron Man, Gen, Not Infinity War or Endgame Compliant, Tony and Rhodey fucking off to another planet, continuation of a series, not focused on team cap or earth, not team Cap friendly, still after all these years and always will be
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:27:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22248619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliaoftwoworlds/pseuds/aliaoftwoworlds
Summary: Navigating the move to a new planet isn’t easy, but at least they have each other.A follow-up to Moving Day: snapshots of Tony and Rhodey before, during, and after the journey to Tolsar.
Series: Tales from Tolsar [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1307891
Comments: 89
Kudos: 596
Collections: ellie marvel fics - read





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It’s been forever! I know and I’m sorry! Interview season is nearly over (holy crap, crazy) and I’ve been busy. Also, I recently got on a big Doctor Who kick, watched most of twelve’s seasons (before Amazon decided it wasn’t free anymore at the new year, fuck them) and absolutely fell in love with both him and thirteen, also Bill because she’s the best ever. So now I have like six twelve and Bill stories that I want to write, but I promise I’m not abandoning the marvel things.
> 
> Anyway, here’s the next one in the Tales from Tolsar series, since there was a lot of interest in it, more than I’d imagined! Obviously not every story in this series is exactly the same, the setup for how Tony (and Rhodey) get to Tolsar is different sometimes, but this one is in the same exact setting as Moving Day, which I consider the sort of “base” version of this Tolsar-related universe I’ve created (which means the first story in this series, where Amilie rescued a dying Tony directly from Siberia, is actually a variation on what I consider to be the “true” story of Tony on Tolsar, which will be told by Moving Day, this story, and a couple others). Sorry if that’s confusing to anyone, but sometimes I need the setting to be a little different. The first chapter of this story starts immediately after the end of chapter 1 of Moving Day. The first chapter is also very dialogue-heavy and not much actually happens, but the following ones won’t all be like that.

There’s a stunned silence in the room after the strange young woman’s pronouncement. Tony glances at Rhodey and sees him glaring suspiciously at the unexpected projection on the opposite wall. Tony himself, still feeling numb and more than a little dead inside thanks to Ross’s little bombshell, decides to keep up with the bold moves. “What kind of proposal?” he asks immediately.

The woman—Amilie—raises her eyebrows as Rhodey makes an angry noise next to Tony, throwing a hand out to slap Tony lightly on the back of the head. “What the hell?” Rhodey says, clearly aimed at Tony.

Tony just stares ahead at the projection, ignoring the fury pouring off of Rhodey next to him at his bold—stupid, he knows—answer. The woman chuckles. “I admit I didn’t expect to get that far that fast,” she says, looking at Tony, “but then, you were always one to jump in with both feet.”

Tony narrows his eyes at that. “Why do you say that like you know me?” he demands, but this time, Rhodey slaps a hand over his mouth.

“I think,” Rhodey says, aiming a deadly glare at Tony, “what he means is _who the hell are you_ , and _what the hell is going on_?”

She doesn’t look the least bit disturbed by Rhodey’s hostility, but she does nod. “That’s more the welcome I was expecting. My name is Amilie. Amilie Pierce, actually, but no one’s cared about my last name for a long time now. If you want to know anything more than that… we’re going to have to take this one step at a time.” She looks from Rhodey back to Tony. “And in answer to your question, I sound like I know you because I do, at least in a way.” She pauses and pulls an oddly annoyed face. “That didn’t sound quite like I was picturing.”

Strangely, that puts Tony slightly more at ease. Not enough to calm his internal alarms or to negate his suspicion or wariness, but it’s something positive to be said about this stranger. A very human thing to say. Of course, it could all be a sham, but it seemed genuine enough.

It doesn’t seem to have had any effect on Rhodey, who’s sitting as rigidly straight-backed and tense as ever. “How are you doing this?” he says, gesturing to the projection on the wall, coming from his phone, which shouldn’t have that capability.

She gives him a slightly sheepish smile. “Some lovely people here set that up for me. I’m afraid I don’t know the specifics, I’m really not much of a tech person. I just told them whose phone I wanted to send the call to and where it could be found. As for the actual chat and how we’re talking and seeing each other right now, I definitely can’t tell you much about that.”

That sets Tony’s mind whirring. If this is some kind of trick or hoax or attempt to get information out of them, he would think whoever was setting it up would have an explanation for their tech at the ready, some kind of excuse they think he’d believe. It seems odd for the woman—Amilie, assuming that really is her name—not to know. On the other hand, if she’s a real person who’s not lying to them, it does make some sense. Most people don’t know anything about how the tech they use on a daily basis works, after all.

Tony has a lot of questions running through his mind, but Rhodey beats him to it yet again. He doesn’t look the least bit mollified by her non-answer. “How did you know where we are?”

Amilie still doesn’t react to the anger and suspicion in his tone, just answers plainly, “A lot of Earth technology is based on a system of signals sent out and then received by the right objects, that much I do know. As I understand it, the whole planet is just broadcasting its information all the time, to anyone who has the right technology to receive whatever they want. It’s not very difficult for… people here, with their systems and tech, to access just about anything they’d like from Earth; the internet, hospital records, informational systems, government databases, anything.”

If possible, Rhodey tenses even more at those words. They set Tony’s heart pounding a little, too; this woman is saying she’s capable of accessing anything on Earth, pretty much. Nuclear launch codes. Entire government systems. Electronic banking. If Tony’s interpreting it correctly, she’s implying that it’s possible to hack into and mess with just about anything. Tony knew that, of course—he’s hacked into a number of supposedly top-secret government files himself. But he always assumed his skills with tech were nearly unsurpassed, and it would take a tech genius like himself a lot of time and effort to really get into something important. The implication that people with the right technology can get into those things with very little effort is disturbing.

There’s another aspect to that, too, that Tony focuses in on, finally getting a word in before Rhodey can. “When you say ‘people here…’ where is ‘here?’”

She sits back and smiles again. “That would be a planet called Tolsar, just off the core galactic ring.”

The silence stretches on this time. Tony glances at Rhodey and sees a skeptical look aimed back at him—Rhodey asking without words whether he is buying any of this. It doesn’t seem likely at all, but then, they know other planets exist, and according to Thor, are far more advanced than they are. It would make sense, for someone who has the technology to do what she’s doing now to be from another planet entirely.

“You’re on another planet,” Tony says, not quite a question, but clearly a request for more information.

Amilie nods. “Tolsar is a society built on the idea of advancement. Its citizens are all experts in various areas, from agriculture to biotechnology. We’re… not exactly a race in the conventional sense. There’s no natural life forms on the planet we’ve inhabited. We’re just a cooperative group of beings who choose to live and work together.”

“And what is someone from an advanced planet in a galaxy far, far away doing watching little old me, here on Earth?” Tony asks, trying not to sound too hostile.

She laughs, which throws him off, and then her next words throw him off even more. “I’m not a Jedi, although I admit I wanted to be one when I was little.”

Tony feels Rhodey jerk in surprise beside him. “How did you know that reference?”

Her smile softens to something almost sad. “I was born on Earth. 1992, in Indiana.”

Tony and Rhodey exchange glances. Rhodey’s face says he doesn’t believe a word of this. Tony’s not sure he does, either, but he also doesn’t see what this woman has to gain from lying to them so extensively. He can tell Rhodey would prefer to just end the conversation, but Tony wants to know more. He wants to know what she wants, and who she really is, and how she’s doing all this. And if she can contact them like this, Tony’s not sure how they would end the conversation without her agreement anyway.

“Okay,” Tony says slowly. When he looks back at the screen, he can see on her face that she knows they don’t believe her. “And how does a nice midwestern Earth girl end up on some far away, super advanced, totally not Star Wars planet?”

She sighs. “That’s a _very_ long story.”

Rhodey gestures, sharply and impatiently. “Well, you’ve got a captive audience here, and we seem to have plenty of time.” He sounds irritated in that way that Tony knows means he’s afraid, but covering it up. It’s how he manages to be calm and cool under pressure, and part of how he’s done so well as a soldier.

She appears to consider Rhodey for a moment before answering. “You’re not a captive audience. At least, I don’t mean for you to be. I made this call hoping to help you, but if you want me to, I’ll end it.”

“Really.” Rhodey doesn’t sound convinced. She raises an eyebrow, almost like she’s about to prove his skepticism wrong by following through, and Tony holds up a hand.

“Wait. I want to hear this.” It’s half directed at her, and half at Rhodey, who’s giving Tony a pissed off look that says they’ll be having words later.

She sighs again. “I’ll try to make this short. I know you’re not going to believe half of this, not at first, but please hear me out. Ask me whatever you need to.”

Tony nods, and she looks away for a moment, like she’s deciding where to start. “I was born on Earth. A perfectly normal human for the first twenty-four years of my life—and then the Flare.”

“Flare?” Tony says. Rhodey has his arms crossed, making it clear he’d rather not be listening to this.

“Exactly what it sounds like. Solar flare, exponentially more massive than the largest ever recorded. It was different from all the others somehow; don’t ask me for details, I don’t really know what the scientists measured. All I know is that it temporarily fried practically everything electronic on most of the planet. We were lucky more planes and cars didn’t crash. But it also affected a ton of people—passing out, vomiting, headaches. I was one of them. Passed out for about five minutes.

“But I was home, alone, and it didn’t take long to figure out that it had happened to a bunch of other people, too. So I didn’t do anything. I felt okay once I woke up, so even though they were telling anyone affected to go to the hospital, I didn’t. Not until a week later.”

She pauses, and in his peripheral Tony sees Rhodey uncross his arms. He’s being drawn in by the story against his will. “What happened a week later?”

She smiles ruefully. “I set a trash can on fire. Clear across the room, without touching it.”

She must see the astonishment on their faces, because her smile turns from rueful to understanding. “I thought I was hallucinating. I managed to get the fire out, but I was convinced I’d either set it myself without realizing it, or hallucinated the entire thing, so I went straight to the hospital. I told them what happened. The psychiatrists came and evaluated me, and they weren’t sure what to do with me, because it didn’t seem like anything was wrong. They told me maybe I was just tired and stressed and had some sort of a minor lapse, and they were going to send me home.

“Before they could discharge me, four government agents showed up in my room to talk to me. Apparently they were monitoring the hospital records, looking for exactly what they’d written about me. Because I wasn’t the only one who was suddenly making things happen that shouldn’t be possible.”

Tony hums, fascinated. “Manifestation of powers… gene mutations, caused by the solar flare? Or something natural, dormant in you, that was activated by it?” He’s throwing out theories, entranced by the story.

“We were never sure. But our working theory was more consistent with the second.”

“Okay, wait,” Rhodey suddenly interrupts. “This is all a great story, but what the hell are you talking about? That didn’t happen. There was no solar flare that fried our electronics. That’s never happened.”

She nods. “You’re right. As far as I can tell, it never happened here.”

Tony frowns. “I thought you said you were from Earth?”

“I am.” She looks away once more, only for a second, taking a deep breath that Tony assumes is meant to be fortifying. “The Earth I grew up on isn’t the one you’re standing on right now. I’m from another Earth, in another, parallel, universe.”

A long silence follows that pronouncement. Then, “What the hell,” Rhodey says.

Tony tilts his head. “There are theories about it,” he concedes. “But traveling between them—?”

“I know it sounds insane,” she says. “It would have to me, too, even back when I was first learning control over my powers. Even when I was discovering that there were things about the universe we weren’t even close to understanding, the idea of a bunch of parallel universes, and being able to travel between them, would have sounded crazy.”

“But?” Rhodey asks. The skepticism is back in his voice, although he also sounds intrigued.

Another rueful smile. “I grew up. I got older, and I moved out into the galaxy, and I learned more and more. There are ways to manipulate time, and if you want to understand anything about that, you need to understand something about space and the nature of the multiverse as well. They’re too thoroughly intertwined to manipulate one without affecting the other. 

“I learned that there are places in space and points in time where the barriers between universes, so to speak, are thinner, weaker. Where it’s possible to cross over. I learned that there are people out there who’ve built cultures around exploring and moving between those universes at those specific points, observing them, cataloguing changes. They’re almost impossible to find, and even harder to understand. And then…”

She sighs this time. “And then, I got cocky. I assumed, because of something I’d done, experience I had, that I would be able to learn more about one of those points of weakness without causing change. I thought I could gain new knowledge. And instead, I fell through it, and I ended up here, where the points of weakness are different, and it could be centuries or more in this universe before I ever have a hope of finding another of those points and trying to get back home.”

For the first time in the conversation, she looks bitter and frustrated. But then the look clears, and she shakes her head and smiles. “But I’m here, and I figured I’d might as well make myself comfortable. It didn’t take long for me to abandon any notion of trying not to interfere in this universe. I might be stuck here for a very long time, which makes this my home for now, and hell if I’m going to sit around and waste my time fighting against the inevitable fact that I will influence it merely by my existence.”

It’s that brief, frustrated look, oddly enough, that has Tony starting to believe her more than anything else. That hint of bitterness over her situation, self-recrimination because she apparently thought she was above something going wrong, and then it _did_ go wrong… Tony’s intimately familiar with those feelings.

Then something else occurs to him. “So, wait, if you’re from another, parallel universe… does that mean you knew _me_ there?”

He gets another nod. “I met my Tony Stark about two years after the Flare. I wasn’t an Avenger or anything, I was just trying to live my life with my powers, but they contacted me for help when they were preparing for the battle with Thanos, and I ended up fighting alongside them.”

Tony and Rhodey exchange glances again, and this time, Tony can see that Rhodey is starting to seem a little more interested too. “Thanos?”

Her expression grows more serious. “The Mad Titan, they call him. As far as I can tell, he’s pretty much the same in this universe as he was in mine. A very powerful, and very insane, being. He thinks that the solution to overcrowding in the universe is to destroy half of everything. And he’s spent years slowly gathering the resources to do it. Followers, armies, and most importantly, the Infinity Stones.”

She looks between Tony and Rhodey as she continues. “Thanos was behind what happened in New York. Loki didn’t lead that invasion, at least not of his own free will. Thanos was the one pulling the strings.”

And all at once, Tony isn’t in the room anymore. He’s light years away, on the other end of an alien portal, looking at that army in space. Thinking that he’s going to die sending in the nuke, and yet knowing that there’s something so much worse out there. Something he has no idea how to defend against.

It’s cold and horrifying, the panic close to the surface thanks to his lapse during Ross’s visit just minutes ago, and it takes a moment for Tony to register Rhodey’s touch on his arm, trying to ground him and bring him back into the present. He takes a few seconds to pull in deep breaths, trying to steady himself, and thankfully, Amilie lets him get himself together without comment.

When he feels steady enough to look back up, she’s watching him with a knowing expression. “What you saw through that portal… That was only a fraction of Thanos’s forces,” she says gravely.

Tony makes a choked sound, and it’s Rhodey who asks, “How did you know about that?” 

It’s a fair question; not many people do. Tony’s told Rhodey, of course, and he tried to tell the rest of the Avengers, though they didn’t listen.

“You told me,” she says plainly. “Or, the Tony Stark I knew told me. I told you, I joined up with the Avengers when you got wind that the invasion was coming.”

Both Tony and Rhodey tense again at that. “Invasion?” Rhodey’s voice comes, sharp and serious. Before, she’d said there was a battle with this Thanos character. That’s worlds away from an invasion.

She nods gravely. “He’s coming to Earth, sooner or later. He’s after the Infinity Stones, and his failed attempt before has only made him more determined. Earth has become an obstacle to him, and you, Tony Stark, have become a threat.”

Tony can practically feel his mouth go dry, his heart pounding against his fragile, recently repaired chest. “Me?”

“You sent that nuke through the portal, cutting off the Chitauri and ending the original invasion. You went head to head with Loki and came out the other side, and Thanos was watching through him. He knows your name.”

“That’s horrifying.” Tony can’t think of anything else to say.

“Then you’re just as smart in this universe as the one I came from. Thanos is nothing to mess with, and he already has at least one of the Stones.” Suddenly, her deadly serious expression turns into a smile. “Thankfully, I can guarantee he won’t get them all in this universe.” 

Rhodey, next to Tony, shakes his head. Tony notices that he’s been holding onto Tony’s hand for the last several minutes, letting Tony probably cut off all of his circulation with his desperately tight grip. “How can you guarantee that? The Mind Stone is here, yeah, in Vision, but Thor took the Tessaract back to Asgard, and who knows where the hell the rest of them are…”

“There’s one other on Earth, actually,” she says, and they both look to her with wide eyes. “The Time Stone. It’s in the possession of the master of a magical order, whose oath is to protect it. In my time, he came and joined us when he found out Thanos was coming.”

“But how can you guarantee that Thanos won’t get them?” Tony says, hoping they can’t hear the desperation in his voice. God, he can’t deal with this. His shitty, broken body, his shattered heart, the assholes who nearly killed him welcomed back like nothing ever happened, and now this. How is he ever going to get the others to believe this, take this threat seriously, when they never would before? Now more than ever, after everything that happened between them, they’ll never listen to him.

“Well,” she says, and her smile turns into something almost smug, “this would be a part of it.”

She reaches a hand up to her neck and pulls at the chain of a necklace, holding the pendant on the end up for them to see. It looks like a medium-sized stone, deep purple like an amethyst, except that it has a sort of slowly swirling luminescence to it. Tony stares at it, catching on. “Is that—”

“An Infinity Stone. Specifically, the Power Stone. It was in the care of a planet called Xandar—thankfully, the same thing happened to it here as it did in my universe. It wasn’t easy, but once I was in a position to barter on behalf of Tolsar, I was able to trade for it. I had to prove to them that I could neutralize it, but once I did, they gave it to me.”

Tony frowns, somewhat taken aback by that statement. “What kind of position are you in that you can ‘barter on behalf of Tolsar?’”

“I’m the Queen of Tolsar,” she says plainly, then tilts her head. “Roughly translated.”

Tony’s trying to puzzle out the meaning of _roughly translated_ , but Rhodey speaks up, the suspicion back in his voice. “I thought you said you were born on Earth, and from another universe. How do you get to be a queen of another planet? Marry into the royal family?”

She shakes her head. “The leaders of Tolsar are elected. It has nothing to do with family or marriage or any of that.”

“Leaders?” Rhodey demands, putting emphasis on the s at the end, and she nods.

“Tolsar has two elected leaders. King and Queen is usually what I hear them called, but I think that’s mostly because there isn’t quite a comparable set of terms in English that my translator likes. They certainly don’t have to be male and female, and a lot of aliens out there don’t even have a gender binary like we do.”

“I don’t mean to sound rude,” Rhodey says, and Tony nearly cringes, because he’s using that tone he uses to tell Tony he’s being an absolute dumbass, “but you expect us to believe you were elected as the leader of an entire advanced planet? What are you, twenty-five? Six?”

At this, she actually looks a little bit annoyed. “Twenty-four, actually, when the Flare happened and I got my powers, which is when I assume I stopped aging.” She raises an eyebrow at the stunned looks on their faces. “What, did you think I abandoned the preparations for the fight with Thanos in my own universe to go looking for the gaps between realities, and that’s how I fell through to here?

“This might be a parallel universe to my own, but the time wasn’t the same when I crossed over. In my world, Thanos invaded Earth in 2018. When I crossed over into this universe, it was 2009 here… and 2040 in mine.”

The brief flash of defiance and stubborn pride on her face vanishes quickly, smoothed back over into the calm demeanor she had at the beginning of the conversation. She sighs. “I look young to any human, I know, and to many humanoids. But they aren’t exactly a majority in the galaxy, and people on Tolsar had no reason not to believe me when I told them my real age. I spent years proving myself here before I was asked to put forth my name when Aljri stepped down. I was elected queen here, and I immediately started reaching out to other planets, trying to find out how far Thanos had gotten here.

“I also started watching the Earth. It didn’t take long to see that up to a certain point, things were going almost exactly the same way here as they did in my universe. Thor had taken the Space Stone—the Tessaract—back to Asgard. The Mind Stone was on Earth, part of Vision after the whole Ultron thing. And the Time Stone was there, in the keeping of the sorcerers—the evidence is there if you know where to look. So I knew where at least three of them were, and that Thanos hadn’t had a chance to get his hands on any of the three.”

Tony sits forward on Rhodey’s bed, ignoring the pain in his ribs as he shifts. An important question has suddenly occurred to him. “If you got here decades after Thanos invaded in your universe, then does that mean you beat him?” He can’t help the pathetic note of desperate hope in his voice, but screw it. He is desperate. He’s been desperate since he saw that army on the other end of a portal, and now, hearing that in a parallel universe, Thanos invaded just two years from now, he’s even more desperate.

Tony lets out a huge breath when she nods. “Yes. In my universe, we stood against Thanos and his forces together with people from all around the world, and the galaxy, actually. Not exactly armies, but enough to engage his top people. It was… hard.” Here, something in her eyes changes, and if Tony wasn’t already convinced by the conversation, this would do it. He’s never seen anyone fake that faraway look of reliving serious, traumatic history. Battles that define your life.

“We were outnumbered, and mostly outgunned,” she says distantly. “And we lost people. We nearly lost the entire thing, but we managed to keep Thanos away from the Time Stone, the last one he needed, for long enough to get me to him. I ended up facing off against him, because my abilities were the best suited to it. I nearly died, and got everyone killed along with me, but in the end, I won. We won.”

She suddenly seems to shake herself, focusing back on the present. Her expression loses the faraway quality and becomes intense, passionate. “I’ve only grown since then. I’ve improved my own control over my powers, and discovered facets to them that I didn’t know existed before. I defeated him once, in my own universe, when I was new to this, young, and afraid. This time, it won’t be so difficult. I _will_ defeat him.”

Tony shares another glance with Rhodey, and this time, he can tell they’re on the same page. It’s Rhodey who voices their skepticism. “Again, not to be rude, but you were just telling us that you ended up in this universe because you got cocky and made a mistake. Kinda seems like that’s what you’re doing right now.”

Her expression hardens just a fraction once more. “That was a completely different circumstance. I have more assurances this time around that I’ll be successful. Also, I’m not doing this alone. I’m not stupid enough to go charging in on my own, confident I can take him down. That’s why I’ve been planning. I’ve been preparing our armies on Tolsar to fight him. I’ve been watching the Earth, making sure I know what’s happening with the Stones there. And I’ve been working to protect—and, where possible, bring together—individuals that I think will be vital in the effort against him.” She tilts her head. “Hence this call.”

Tony blinks. “What?”

She gives him a look of such overwhelming familiarity that suddenly, he can’t disbelieve her claim that she knows him, or at least a him from another universe. “Tony Stark. Comments about your ego notwithstanding, you are one of the most qualified people on the Earth to face off against Thanos. You’re intelligent, adaptable, creative, determined, and most of all, _prepared_ to face alien threats.” She looks from him to Rhodey. “And James Rhodes, don’t think I’m discounting your input here. Your experience with battle, your leadership skills, your ability to plan and adapt, and your engineering background are pretty damn invaluable.”

Tony crosses his arms, still not understanding her point. “So you want me to prepare to fight Thanos?”

She takes a breath and sits back once more. “I want you to continue preparing. It’s what you’ve done so far, or at least what you’ve tried to do, but you’ve encountered obstacles at every turn, from your team not believing you to that asshole Ross trying to screw everything up. Yes,” she adds with a smile at the looks on their faces, “he existed and was just as big a pain in the ass in my universe, too. I had the displeasure of dealing with him a few times when the government was first getting involved in studying my powers.”

Tony shakes his head, trying to process all of this. “Okay, wait. You say that things have been pretty much the same here so far as in your universe. So we can assume Thanos will eventually invade Earth, trying to get the stones. Except you’ve been preparing to fight him, I assume _before_ that happens.” She nods. “And you want me to help with those preparations, except like you’ve pointed out, no one believes me. I haven’t exactly had the best luck so far with preparing for anything. So are you planning to come here and tell the UN that they need to believe the threat, or what?”

“Ah.” She gives him another small smile. “I could, although I’d really rather not. Trust me, I’m very familiar with Earth’s capacity for denial, and the political nightmare that trying to convince them to work together at any point preceding a full-scale invasion would be.”

“So what did you have in mind?” Rhodey asks.

She takes another slow breath, smile replaced by seriousness once more. “Well, until recently, I was planning to simply make contact and give you some ideas to implement there on Earth, just to shore up the defenses, essentially, and then leave you to it.”

“But?” Tony asks. He can sense the ‘but.’

“But, something changed. I told you that things have been more or less the same here as they were in my universe, but that changed recently. About a week ago, in fact.”

Tony immediately tenses and feels Rhodey squeeze his hand again. She continues on, undeterred. “What the media called the ‘Civil War’ between the Avengers was a major turning point in my universe. For all of you, personally, but also for the future of the Sokovia Accords and the idea of superheroes on Earth in general. _You_ , and the example you set, are probably the most important player on that board.”

Tony’s jaw is clenched against his will, so Rhodey again speaks for him. “And?”

“And, what’s happened to you in the last week isn’t the same as what happened in my universe. Siberia was the turning point.” 

At that, Tony actually flinches, a painful, full-body twitch that has Rhodey running a soothing hand down his back and casting a dangerously dark look at the screen. Amilie, to her credit, does look apologetic. “I’m sorry, but there’s no avoiding the subject. What happened there was deeply personal to you, and it played an important part in your future as a defender of the Earth.”

She must see the apprehension on Tony’s face, because she adds, “I don’t know the details. You never told me, and I’m not asking you to tell me now. It’s not important. What’s important is the differences in what happened. In my universe, Tony Stark came back from Siberia on his own. Beat up, sure, and looking pretty pissed off, but he immediately set to work on getting around Ross to continue improving the Accords, making sure they were fair without being too restrictive. Still committed to the future, to making sure there were responsible systems in place.

“That didn’t happen here. You came back unconscious, and while you were out, Ross ran wild. His perverted version of the Accords is nothing like what I signed when I discovered my powers and agreed to work with the Avengers. He messed everything up, and I’m assuming that he was able to do that because you weren’t there to oppose him. Not only were you not there, in fact, but he used your injuries as an example, to further illustrate his fear and hatred of enhanced people and push others into agreeing with him.”

She pauses. “The other important difference in my world was that when the threat came, years after Siberia, the others came back. Rogers, Romanoff, Barton, Barnes, Maximoff, they came back with your blessing. Reluctant and wary, maybe, but you gave it. You didn’t have to be friends with them, but you were willing to work with them.”

Tony can practically feel his teeth cracking with how hard he’s grinding them together. The hand that’s not crushing Rhodey’s is clenched into a fist, nails digging into his own palm. She gives him a sympathetic look that grates on his nerves. “In my world, they definitely weren’t forced back on you immediately, like this. And whatever happened in Siberia—again, I’m not asking you to tell me—I get the feeling, from your condition if nothing else, that it was worse here than in my time.”

Rhodey makes an angry sound. “How do you know they’re coming back? Ross just told us that.”

She raises her eyebrows like it’s obvious. “I was listening in. I’d apologize, but like I said, it was an important conversation. Possibly vital to the future of Earth’s defense, and I’m pretty invested in that.” She looks back and forth between them. “And I got the feeling from that conversation that there’s not a chance in hell you’ll welcome them back and work with them again. You’re certainly not going to ask them to believe you now when they wouldn’t before.”

Tony finally recovers his voice. “So what’s the alternative? What are you offering?”

“Leave,” she says simply. “Come to Tolsar with me, both of you. Help me prepare for this fight.”

When they both sit there in shocked silence, she continues, a spark of excitement in her eyes. “Tolsaran citizens have to be approved, to prove they can contribute something to the good of the society. Usually that’s done through a record of their accomplishments in the past, like a resume. Knowing I might have this conversation someday, I provided the council here with evidence of some of the things both of you have done quite a while ago. You’ve both been provisionally accepted as citizens, if you want it.”

Tony can only gape at her, and he has a feeling Rhodey is doing the same. “Why?” is all he can ask.

She smiles. “Like I said, you were instrumental in fighting Thanos the first time. Both of you. I’d like you working with me again. Also,” and here her smile turns a little softer, “I worked with both of you long enough in my universe to consider you friends, I’d like to think. I don’t like the thought of leaving you to suffer here on Earth, in this crappy situation. Forced to be around people who hurt you and betrayed you, forced under Ross’s control, injured and—oh!”

Her eyes widen, and she suddenly stands from her seat, running out of sight of the screen for a minute. When she returns, she’s holding something small that she sets on a table next to her seat. Some kind of holographic screen pops up, and she taps a few things on it. “I’m sending this to your phone.” She glances up at Rhodey and smiles, then looks back down. “Plans for an assistive device that’ll let you walk again. I know very well Tony probably has something in the works already, and he might be able to make that faster than this one, but now there’ll be no need to work out the bugs once you can create this. I have no idea what any of it means, I told you I’m not a tech person, but I’m sure you can figure it out.”

Tony’s insides swoop uncomfortably, climbing up into his throat. She’s right, of course, he already has plans in his head for something to help Rhodey. But to have something advanced, without having to go through the inevitable trial and error that would come with testing and improving it… “That’s…”

She finishes her typing and gives them both her full attention again, smiling when she sees their expressions. “If you choose to come here, we have people that can heal you completely, so you don’t even need a device to walk at all. But I’m not trying to blackmail or coerce you here. I can’t send those people there, but this is the best we have long-distance and it should work well for you if you prefer to stay.”

Tony sits for a minute, overwhelmed, and she thankfully lets him, staying quiet. Rhodey squeezes his nearly numb hand again, and they share a long look, trying to have an entire conversation without words. It’s both easy and hard. 

“Thank you,” Rhodey finally says, looking away from Tony and back to her.

She just nods, so Tony is the one to ask, “When do you need an answer?”

She tilts her head again. “Well, based on the conversation you just had with Ross, I’d say about a week. Technically, I don’t need to know at any particular time. And if you do decide you want to stay for now, this isn’t a one-time offer. You can always contact me again. But it seems like you’re stuck going into a pretty intolerable situation, so if you’d like to have something to look forward to through that, well… the offer’s open.”

“What would we have to do?” Tony asks.

“Well, if you do say yes, I’ll have to officially pass on your request for citizenship. You have a provisional offer right now, but you need to be reviewed and then extended an actual offer. There are preparations that would need to be made on my end, and a few technical details you’d have to take care of. That’s pretty much it.” She chuckles. “Not to oversimplify moving to another planet, but, well, it’s not quite as complicated as you might think.”

Tony glances at Rhodey once more. “So how long would it take? I mean, I have some things here I’d want to take care of…”

Another smile. “The actual journey to Earth would take me about two weeks. Even if we took care of everything else as soon as possible, you’d have to wait at least that long for me to get there and pick you up. And I can delay leaving if you need me to. You’ll have as long as you need to take care of whatever you’d like.”

Tony sighs. This is all just… too much, but at least he has some information, and maybe a timeline. He can work with that. “Okay. So… okay. We can think about it. How do we contact you again?”

“You got a phone call before this projection started, just call that number back. It’ll connect back to me, or at least to one of my people, who will get it to me.”

She surveys them both for a minute. “I’ll leave you to think about it. I know this is a lot to put on you, all at once, and after another big shock, and I’m sorry about that. I do want to help you, but I understand how hard it is to just trust that I’m telling the truth and that I can help. So, before I go, is there anything else you want to ask me now?”

Tony has about a million and one questions, but he’s not sure he can even make sense of them right now. Before he asks her anything else, he really just wants to sit with Rhodey and have a long conversation. He wants another opinion, one he can trust. He numbly shakes his head.

Rhodey, though, sits up a little straighter, finally letting go of Tony’s hand to cross his arms one more time. “One thing.” She quirks an eyebrow in question. “What’s your bad story?”

She frowns. “My what?”

Rhodey doesn’t move, radiating that firm, commanding presence he commands when he’s really serious. “You say you’ve fought Thanos, and that it was a tough battle. Anyone who’s ever seen combat, or been in a war zone, has a moment that’s gone to hell and back. Something they regret, or at least keeps them up at night. What’s yours?”

It’s like Rhodey to go straight for something so intense, but it’s also smart, and it’s how Rhodey can really read someone, how he can tell if they’re telling the truth. Tony looks over at him, sees the calculating look on his face. And he’s reminded that Rhodey is the smartest, toughest, and wisest person Tony knows by far.

Amilie sits back at his question, and the haunted look that Tony recognizes returns to her face. She takes a long moment before answering.

“In the final fight against Thanos… there was a moment. We had him cornered, pretty much, but only for a second. It could all fall apart any minute. And if it did… we would lose. We were barely holding his forces off. And I had a chance to take him out.

“He knew it. And he knew us. Humans. He thought we were weak. Emotionally and physically. So… he took a hostage. Not just a random person, but one of us. One of the fighters. Someone I knew, someone I fought alongside up until that point. He grabbed them, and held them up like a human shield. I couldn’t get to him without going through them. And he taunted me—all of us. Saying that we wouldn’t sacrifice one of our own.”

She pauses and takes a pained breath, closing her eyes for a moment. Tony’s about to ask what happened, though he has a dreadful feeling he knows the answer, but he doesn’t need to. She centers herself and looks Rhodey right in the eyes when she finishes her story.

“I did it anyway. His monologue to me was a weakness, an opening, and it might have been the only one we ever got. I attacked, and I went through my teammate to do it.”

She takes another deep breath, still never breaking eye contact. “I don’t regret it. I never have, not for a moment. But as for keeping me up at night? Yeah, it did, for a long time. I still think about it, every once in a while. 

“Half the universe was at stake. That was the only real chance we’d gotten, and if I’d failed, if I’d hesitated, we might all have been killed, and the universe would have paid the price. I did what I had to do. 

“But… I saw plenty of people die in that battle, and some of them were people I was friends with, people I’d fought with. But I wasn’t the one who killed them. This was different. I murdered an innocent person without a second thought to get to Thanos, and I’d do it again. That… well, I’m not sure it changed me, but it certainly opened my eyes to who I really was. I’ve never claimed to be a perfect person, and I’ve never been one to think in black and white, but that moment made it pretty clear. I’m certainly no fairy tale or action movie hero, and thinking of myself as one is nothing but childish idealism.”

Tony shudders at the darkness in her voice. He can’t judge. God knows he’s done enough awful things in his life, gotten innocent people killed for much less noble reasons than killing someone who was trying to wipe out half the universe. At the same time… he’s not sure he can imagine cutting through a teammate, a friend, without remorse to get to the bad guy. That takes a level of ruthlessness that Tony’s not sure quite how to define. 

She’s right about one thing—nothing about fighting villains is ever like a fairy tale or an action movie. Things don’t wrap up well in the real world, with the heroes all saving the day, beloved by everyone, and getting everything they want, while the villains end up in jail or dead, all loose ends tied up. Real life is never that nice.

Rhodey studies her for a long moment, but eventually he nods. Tony’s not sure whether he believes her, and he certainly doesn’t trust her yet, not completely, but Tony knows she’s given them enough for Rhodey to be open to conversation. That’s all that Tony needs for now.

She wipes the drained look off her face and returns to her calm half-smile. “Call me again when you’ve made a decision, or if you need to talk more before you do. For now… thank you for listening. And good luck.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Realistically, there's no way Tony and Rhodey would agree to just move to another planet after a single conversation. So they're going to have more, but this is the most important one. I'm skipping the rest of those though, the next chapter will be in the middle of the Moving Day story, when they've already agreed to move and are preparing for it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a short chapter, set in the middle of chapter 2 of Moving Day. Really just a little bit of their preparations and some insight into Rhodey’s thoughts during the wait. This is the last one that’s actually set during Moving Day, every chapter after this will be set after the end of that story.

Rhodey’s barely been in the Compound for ten minutes when Tony finds him. Tony’s been stuck here for the most of the last three days, whereas Rhodey’s just returned from another meeting with his superiors—former superiors, because he’s getting honorably discharged. 

That was a hard one to accept. It took him days to get on board with this whole plan to begin with, and he still has the tiniest of doubts in the back of his mind. Really, it wasn’t until Tony managed to finish the upgraded braces that Amilie sent the plans for that Rhodey even started to believe her offer.

Naturally, Tony had him in his own version practically as soon as they were released from the hospital. They were far from perfect, but Rhodey could stand, and that was a miracle in itself. Still, it was clear from the moment he walked—if it could really be called that—into the room to meet with the Air Force higher-ups that he wasn’t going to be serving anymore.

If he was really planning to stay on Earth, he’d have fought to stay. He’d have told them that the braces would be improved, and that even if they weren’t, Tony would rewire the suit so that he could operate it even without the use of his legs. And he did hedge his bets at the beginning; he said there was a possibility he would recover in part, and that he’d like to keep his options open.

But less than a week after her call, Tony finished Amilie’s device and the difference was astounding. It was enough to finally convince Rhodey to really consider her offer. Tony’s poorly-concealed enthusiasm about the idea went some way toward convincing him, too, honestly.

He spent a long time thinking hard about the offer, and about himself and what he wanted out of this. He wasn’t about to give up his career and move to another planet just for Tony, as much as he loved him. He needed to want to do this for himself.

But Tony was a part of the decision, for sure. If Amilie had never contacted them, and they were forced to stay, they’d be miserable. Tony was determined to try to fix the Avengers and what Ross had turned the Accords into, which meant staying at the Compound, working with the scumbags who betrayed him and tried to kill him, and having to smile and shake hands with the man who murdered his parents. 

Tony would be miserable. And Rhodey would stay, no question, to try to support him and also to keep going with his work as War Machine, which he truly believed in. But he’d be miserable too. One of his only bright points, probably for quite a while, would be Tony.

Adding in Amilie’s offer, if Tony left with her and Rhodey stayed behind, he wouldn’t even have Tony around to help take the sting out of all the bullshit that had been dumped on them recently. He’d have to deal with all of the disgraced Avengers on his own, plus Ross and his minions, and of course navigate his injury.

The only reason he’d stay, really, would be to help protect and defend the Earth. At one point, that mission had just been his country—that’s why he joined the military to begin with. At some point, around the time Tony showed up with a metal suit, that expanded to include the entire world. There were threats on Earth that he couldn’t address from anywhere else, and of course, now they knew more about Thanos and the coming invasion. That was a major event that they needed to prepare for.

On the other hand, Amilie had told them she was capable of containing the Infinity Stones. On more extensive talks with her, they learned more about her and her offer. Her planet contracted with armies from around the galaxy, meaning they had the numbers to really fight Thanos. She had the resources to back up her claims, and she was willing to answer just about anything for them. It was clear that she was their best bet when it came to fighting Thanos. And in the end, he decided that he could do the most for his planet by sticking with Tony and going to Tolsar with Amilie.

Rhodey still didn’t quite trust her. But he did trust Tony. He didn’t necessarily trust Tony to be as critical as possible, or as suspicious as Rhodey himself, but he trusted Tony’s instincts. And he couldn’t blame Tony, who had it far worse when it came to the other assholes, for wanting to jump on a chance to leave while still being committed to protecting the planet.

Preparations are underway now. Amilie is arriving in nine more days, and sometimes Rhodey still has trouble accepting that he’s really going to just leave. He’s accepted his honorable discharge and the paperwork should be going through just before Amilie arrives to pick them up. He has occasional meetings with Tony’s lawyers related to canceling all of his contracts with the Avengers and everything that’s needed to make sure no one he cares about suffers when he leaves, but for the most part, they’re taking care of that for him and Rhodey doesn’t have to do anything. Amilie has assured him that his phone can be upgraded when he gets to Tolsar so that he can still contact his mother and anyone else he needs to.

Tony has way more to do. He’s more intensely involved with the Avengers, of course, though that’s the least of his troubles right now. Like Rhodey, Tony is mostly leaving everything to do with that to his team of lawyers. Their job is to make sure that when Tony tells his ‘teammates’ to go to hell and leaves in a week and a half, they can’t try to force any of the things they think they’re owed onto Pepper, Stark Industries, or anyone or anything else Tony cares about.

Meanwhile, he’s setting everything else up with Pepper. That’s been difficult, too, Rhodey knows. They’d been on a “break” before all the bullshit, but she was back when Vision brought him home from Siberia, and as soon as he was awake, she was telling him that she still loves him and wants to be together. Rhodey knows Tony is having a hard time believing it, but it doesn’t make it any easier for him to leave her.

She’s one of the few people who knows exactly what they’re planning. For obvious reasons, they haven’t told many. Even Tony’s legal team don’t know why Tony and Rhodey suddenly want to cut all ties with the Avengers, the government, and pretty much anyone and anything else they’re legally bound to. But they’re professionals and they’re doing their jobs anyway.

On the other hand, their friends and loved ones deserve to know where they’re going and why. Rhodey knows Tony’s been thinking about meeting with a reporter or somehow setting up a release of information for shortly after they leave, so that the whole world finds out the truth about the situation, but it wouldn’t be fair to let the people they care about find out that way.

Pepper was one of the first to know. Rhodey’s told his mother—not the details, but the fact that he’s moving somewhere far away and while he can call her and video chat, he might not be coming back any time in the foreseeable future. Tony’s told Pepper and Happy, of course, plus both of the kids he adamantly refuses to acknowledge that he’s mentoring, Harley and Peter.

That’s the other big thing taking up a lot of Tony’s time. He’s arranged for all kinds of equipment to be sent to Harley Keener and his family, funds set up for them, and everything else Tony can think of to take care of them. He’s got a lawyer for the family, making sure that the kid doesn’t get dragged into any of the Avengers drama, since he’ll be tied to Tony now in a more obvious way.

Peter’s the more difficult one. Tony’s spent hours in meetings over the last week or so, talking with the new Accords Council and certain sympathetic parties within the UN. Doing it all while avoiding Ross is a delicate balancing act. So is convincing them to work with him at all, after Ross was so enthusiastic about creating the Council and getting that moron Rogers to pretty much sign away all his important rights to them without thinking.

But Tony has been gathering evidence and contacts for years. He’s had his eye on dozens of enhanced and other specialized people who might have been candidates for the Avengers, once upon a time. Now, after more than a week of arguing, Tony has managed to convince the Council that none of them will ever sign the bastardized Accords Ross mangled, and that the Earth won’t have them as defenders when they’re needed.

The next step has been negotiating a new, separate contract that’s less restrictive and more like what Tony envisioned the Accords could have been. In the future, Tony hopes, it will set a pattern for agreements for those individuals and others, in case they should want to defend the planet legally without having to hitch their wagon to Rogers and his crew. Right now, it’s mostly for Peter, who’s told Tony that he wants to keep fighting as a superhero, but has been explicitly warned against getting tangled up with the Avengers.

That was another difficult conversation, Rhodey knows. Peter’s young, and he idolizes Tony. And Tony has been very good at keeping up a façade for the public. Tony’s injuries after Siberia went a long way toward convincing Peter that Captain America is a very flawed, very dangerous man who’s not safe to be around, but the kid wants to fight. So far, he’s had the luck of only being involved in smaller, more local issues as Spiderman, and he hasn’t had any of those soul-crushing missions yet, the ones that take the shine off being a superhero. 

It doesn’t help that he wants to be an Avenger, and Tony has done such a good job of keeping the public image of the Avengers relatively untarnished that even after fighting them in Germany, Peter had no idea of the extent of the Avengers’ internal problems. It was a difficult decision for both Tony and Rhodey, picking out what to tell the kid about the truth of the Avengers, in order to impress on him that it’s not a group he wants to be a part of, without revealing information they consider too personal or crushing poor Peter’s enthusiasm so intensely that he loses all desire to continue being Spiderman. They don’t want that.

Tony’s still working on it, but at least he has Peter convinced to wait for his contract negotiations with the Council. Hopefully something good will come of them. If it doesn’t, if Tony doesn’t have time before they leave to convince the Council of what he wants, he’ll leave his legal team in charge of finding a good deal for Peter while avoiding the Avengers and Ross’s version of the Accords.

And neither of Tony’s kids will be alone. Pepper has now met both of them, and Tony’s fierce protectiveness has already rubbed off on her. She and Happy will make sure that they’re taken care of and that they’re not getting themselves into too much trouble—at least, not the kind of trouble the adults can help them avoid. 

While all of this is going on, of course, Tony has the additional pressure of the formerly rogue Avengers living in his damn Compound, coming back and practically waving their ‘victory’ in his face just by being here. Tony has to sleep in the same building as the man who killed his parents and the ‘friend’ who betrayed him. Not to mention the washed-up archer who hates him, the psychopathic witch who wants nothing more than to see him dead, and the backstabbing spy who sold him out in a critical moment. Lang and Wilson, too, but to Tony they’re little more than a footnote, just blind followers who, like most others, would rather trust Captain America without reason than listen to Tony’s logic.

Rhodey’s been lucky enough to avoid most of them so far, spending most of his time away from the Compound and in talks with the Air Force or Tony’s lawyers off-site. Plus, he still lives in his apartment away from the Compound. No one has bothered to ask whether he’s moving into the Compound, despite the fact that Rogers has decreed all Avengers need to live there—as though he has any right to claim Tony’s building as his domain—which just proves that the rest of the shortsighted bastards have written Rhodey off already. Yet another reason he’ll be glad to see their faces when they realize he and Tony are leaving the planet and leaving them with nothing.

He’s at the Compound now; he tries to come over whenever he can just to support Tony, who’s more stressed than ever through this process. The imminent prospect of their leaving is sustaining him, but it can only go so far. They’ve set up a little reminder system for themselves—mostly Tony—repeating the number of days until they leave to themselves and each other when things get particularly unbearable. If they just say the numbers, they can even do it in front of the others, so long as they don’t do it often enough for the assholes to realize it’s a countdown and start causing even more trouble.

He’s been sitting in one of the empty rooms in the east wing, where the others are thankfully not allowed, for about ten minutes when the door opens. It can’t be anyone Rhodey doesn’t want to see, but he looks up anyway, in time to see Tony slide into the room, shut the door behind him, and then lean against the wall, looking utterly exhausted.

His fists are clenched, the lines in his face more prominent than ever. He has about a hundred possible reasons for it, but Rhodey knows which one it is this time. There’s a certain air to Tony’s defeated yet incensed posture that only one person really puts there. “Rogers?”

Tony pinches the bridge of his nose and rolls his eyes, looking up at the ceiling. “Cornered me in the hallway.”

“What did he want?”

Tony laughs, completely humorlessly. “To ‘apologize’ to me.”

Rhodey grimaces. “Let me guess; no improvement over the last one.”

“Pretty much exactly the same. He wants me to ‘understand’ why he lied to me and beat the shit out of me. He wants me to stop blaming poor Bucky and get along with him. And, of course, to create some miracle technology so we can scrub the triggers and all the HYDRA memories out of the Russian Wonder’s head, so he can turn back into plucky Bucky Barnes and only I have to live with what he did.”

Tony delivers the last line with gritted teeth and Rhodey gets to his feet, coming over to put his hands on Tony’s shoulders. “Hey. Nine more days.”

Tony nods, letting his eyes close. “Nine more days. Can’t possibly come fast enough.”

Rhodey smiles this time. “Except for all the work you still have to do.”

Tony chuckles, forcing his eyes open again. “I could work forever and never be done. I think the time limit is a good thing. Forces me to just be done when she comes, and trust Pep and Happy and everyone else to take care of things from there.”

“Can you do that?” Rhodey doesn’t mean it to be insulting, but Tony has always had a hard time accepting help from others, and trusting other people to do something for him when he can’t supervise. He’s definitely a bit of a control freak, but more than that, his father beat it into him from a young age—perhaps literally, Rhodey was never sure but he has a pretty low opinion of Howard’s parenting skills just based on what he’s observed of Tony over the years—that needing help is a weakness, and accepting it means admitting defeat.

Tony thinks for a second, which at least tells Rhodey he didn’t take the question as an insult. “I do,” he eventually says. “I trust about three people in the world right now, and one of them is coming with me—” he gives Rhodey a genuine smile, which Rhodey returns happily— “so I need to leave everything else to the other two.”

Tony finally pushes himself away from the wall, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. “Nine more days.”

“Nine more days,” Rhodey repeats and follows as Tony opens the door and heads back out with his head held high. “We can do it.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the unscheduled wait, I started my sub-internship (which is now almost finished) and also became newly obsessed with Good Omens and re-obsessed with Doctor Who, so a lot of my daydreaming and creative energy went toward them for a while. But I won’t leave my love Marvel <3 I’ve also spent the last few days really sick and feeling like crap, ugh.
> 
> Another short one, I’m sorry, that may happen to a few of these. I will try to get some more out a little faster in the future, though. Right now, I don’t know how many chapters this story is going to have. I’ve planned 13 so far but there may be more in the future. Really, I just wanted to get this story started so that it would be there and I could also begin writing some of the other stories I have planned for this series.

It takes less than an hour for the rushing adrenaline of victory to fade into deep apprehension. 

When they first followed Amilie onto her ship, Tony was practically buoyant with success, and with the vindictive pleasure of finally telling those assholes to go fuck themselves. The added bonus of the looks on their faces when he dropped the bombshell about his interview with Christine Everhart was just the cherry on top.

Once they were on board, the ship took off so smoothly that Tony barely noticed it happening. For the first ten minutes, he and Rhodey were entirely consumed with being awed and amazed at the ship and its advanced design. It’s incredible inside, smooth and sleek and looking every bit like something out of a sci-fi movie, yet somehow even better. Within minutes, Tony was already itching to learn more about the holographic displays and the way they moved across the solid surfaces of the ship, following its occupants without needing their direction.

Amilie disappeared to somewhere near the front of the ship fairly quickly, telling them to make themselves at home and feel free to explore. She said she needed to make some calls back to Tolsar—no doubt she was very busy, and she’d already told them that spending several weeks away for the journey to Earth and back would mean she’d be missing a lot back home—and left them with a smile. She came alone to retrieve them, so they’re not expecting to run into anyone else.

After some awed exploration of the main room that the ramp onto the ship led them into, Tony and Rhodey finally turn to look at each other. Tony sees his own expression, no doubt, mirrored in Rhodey’s face: wonder, excitement, and of course, a sort of wide-eyed disbelief that _they really did it_. They really just left Earth. They left Earth and they’re not planning to come back any time soon. They left behind their friends, families, and everything they know to forge a new life with only each other as a familiar, guiding force.

A few deep breaths and nervous laughs later, they venture out into one of the hallways to search for where they’ll be staying on the week-long journey back to Tolsar. Tony isn’t exactly expecting anything like a cramped, stained room with a set of military-style bunks, not with the clearly advanced tech and the relatively large ship, but he’s still pleasantly surprised when they discover a hall lined on either side with about twelve well-furnished, medium-sized bedrooms.

The rooms are clean and comfortable, though definitely a little… alien. The beds don’t seem very different from any on Earth, but the lights, which come on automatically when anyone enters one of the rooms, come from the edges of the ceiling and the frame of the bed, without any visible bulbs or panels. What appears to be a solid back wall to the room fades into a clear, wall-to-wall window out to space with a single touch. It’s a gorgeous view of the stars in the distance, clearer and more astounding than can ever be seen from Earth’s surface, but Tony’s glad when Rhodey touches the window and the solid wall reappears—he was starting to feel an unnatural cold, looking out into deep space.

Rhodey claims a room next to Tony’s and they spend the next few minutes taking their bags from the entrance of the ship to their rooms, unpacking some of their things and settling in as much as they can. Tony spends a few minutes longer than necessary in the little room attached to the bedroom, which he presumes is meant to be a bathroom. He doesn’t recognize any of the appliances, and makes a mental note to ask Rhodey later if they can figure it out together. He’s already embarrassed at the prospect of having to ask Amilie which one is the toilet and how to use it.

Unpacking on his own, in his silent room, unfortunately, gives his mind plenty of time and space to start running away with its thoughts. At first, he’s still flushed with pleasure, high on the success of their plan, the perfectly timed blows they’d dealt before they left, and the exhilarating newness of this ship. But then he starts focusing on Earth.

He left behind so much. It’s not so much the idea of having to start an entirely new life that bothers him—that’s a challenge and one he’s willing to face, even if parts of it are terrifying. The fact that it’ll be on a new planet, full of aliens he’s never seen and advanced tech he doesn’t understand yet, is more exciting than scary.

But he’s leaving behind _everything_. Everything except Rhodey, of course, which is in fact the only reason he was able to do all this without breaking down. Whatever he told Rhodey when they were discussing it—about making their own decisions without relying on what the other was doing—he’s not sure he could have done this if Rhodey hadn’t agreed to come as well.

He spent practically every spare moment in the last few weeks preparing everything back home, and yet it still feels like he barely accomplished anything. He wasn’t lying when he told Rhodey that he trusts Pepper and Happy to take care of things back home, but that doesn’t mean his anxieties about it just disappear. 

He’s not going to be able to get back in contact with them until they’re back on Tolsar. Just over a week from now. The state he left everything in… he made sure most of the legal stuff was absolutely covered, and even if he missed something, he has a legal team to rival any other on the planet and a CEO ruthless enough to cut the throat of anyone who dares try anything.

But Ross was livid when he left, and Ross is a slimy, manipulative bastard who doesn’t mind skirting the law to get what he wants. He had his assistants there with their damn _guns_ out when Amilie landed, and then Tony pissed him off even more. Deliberately, making a show of it. Maybe that wasn’t the best decision. 

Oh, god, what if he tries to take it out on Pepper? What if he manages to track down Peter and Harley, and takes Tony’s absence out on them and their families? Tony made sure he had everything as covered as possible when it came to the law, contracts and paperwork and documentation. But he didn’t truly consider the possibility of someone just physically attacking the people he left behind.

Why didn’t he consider that? He thinks of Obie; Obie, who tried to shut Tony out of the company by legal means but quickly resorted to just trying to turn him into a smear on the pavement when that didn’t go his way. In fact, legal wasn’t even his first option—his first try was paying terrorists to blow Tony away. 

He thinks about Obie’s sneering smiles, his sneaky business dealings, that calm but commanding tone that he’d used, along with decades of careful emotional abuse, to always get Tony to acquiesce to what he wanted. He thinks about the way Obie looked at him, and suddenly it’s Ross in his place, and they’re practically the same person, aren’t they?

He knows he’s spiraling. He needs to get a grip before he ends up in a full-blown anxiety attack, so he forces his legs to move, stumbling out of the room and to the one next to it. The door is closed. He knocks twice, sharply, before drawing his arms around himself, shivering once before clenching his jaw and his fists, trying to pull himself together.

The door opens after only a few seconds’ pause and Rhodey is standing in the doorway, looking surprised. “Tony? It’s open, you know you can just wave in front of the little light, you don’t have to knock—” he stops himself and his eyes narrow, taking Tony in. “What’s wrong?”

Tony tries to take a steadying breath so his voice won’t shake, an attempt to fake nonchalance in front of Rhodey. It backfires as Rhodey obviously hears the shakiness in his inhale and his look of concern turns more severe. Tony tries to shrug, but it’s halfhearted at best and he knows it. “What if we did the wrong thing?” His attempt at a casual question comes out anxious and heavy with fear.

“Oh,” Rhodey says, and his expression turns understanding. Then his hands are on Tony’s arms, guiding him gently inside his room and sitting him down on Rhodey’s bed. “That was a little faster than expected.”

Tony frowns, so busy trying to figure out what Rhodey means that he doesn’t really register the open view of the expanse of space until Rhodey has made the wall solidify once more, blocking it out. Awful thoughts are still swirling around in Tony’s head and he’s breathing just a little too fast, but somehow he’s already calmer than just a minute ago. He could swear Rhodey’s room is warmer and cozier and friendlier than his, even though they looked identical an hour ago—but really, he knows it’s just Rhodey being in the room that makes the difference.

Before Tony can manage a response, Rhodey is already turning back to him, bending down in front of where Tony sits on the bed to put his hands on his shoulders. “Okay, let’s get a few things out of the way first,” Rhodey says, and it sounds practiced, like he was planning for this moment. “Everything is set up. We’ve been accepted as Tolsaran citizens, the queen came all the way to Earth to get us, you tied up all the loose ends you could back home _and_ you’ve got some of the smartest, best people on the planet back there making sure it all stays good now that you’re gone. We’re not turning the ship around, there’s no way to reverse what you did before you left, and we’re going to head into something new and honestly scary as shit and we’re going to face it together.”

He punctuates the end of the little speech with a warm squeeze of Tony’s shoulders and a small smile. Tony doesn’t return it, furrowing his brows instead. “Did you plan that?”

Rhodey rolls his eyes. “Tony, come on. You have two states when it comes to making big decisions: not thinking at all, and overthinking so much I’m amazed you don’t go insane. You could win a damn gold medal in overthinking things. I expected weeks ago that you’d do exactly that once we were on the ship, that you’d want to turn around and go back.”

Tony battles between feeling flattered and insulted by how well Rhodey knows him and the assumptions he’s made. He sighs. “I wasn’t thinking of turning the ship around, actually.”

Rhodey raises a disbelieving eyebrow and Tony can’t help the slight pout. “Not _really_. I… hadn’t gotten that far.”

At that, Rhodey gives him a fairly patronizing look that has Tony shrugging out of his grip and rolling his eyes. “Shut up,” he says preemptively.

Rhodey smiles. “Well, hopefully you’re not getting there. So, is it Pepper? Happy? The kids?”

Tony shudders again, the swirling panic pushing a little closer to the forefront of his mind once more. “All of them. I just… I started thinking that leaving Ross behind that pissed off might not have been the best idea.”

Rhodey tilts his head. “Why? You know you had him on the contract stuff, that was airtight. Your lawyers are a hell of a lot better than his.”

“But what if he forgets the legal stuff?” The words come out in a rush.

“You mean if he just straight up goes illegal? It’s all way too public for that, especially after your interview. He would never get away with locking anyone up, the world has too many eyes on them.”

Tony shakes his head. “That’s not what I meant. He—you saw how pissed he was, and his people were _armed_.”

Rhodey blinks, clearly taken aback. “You think he’d try to shoot them?” When Tony just sits there, wide-eyed and silent, Rhodey puts his hands back on his shoulders and squeezes them tightly again. “Tony, there’s no way. He was right there in front of everyone. You know you had tech watching them. And… look, I know Rogers and Romanoff and the rest of them aren’t worthy of being called heroes, but they wouldn’t just let someone attack Pepper or Happy.”

Tony nods at that. His rational mind knows that’s true. He’d left everyone he cared about with both wearable and home-installed tech that would monitor and protect them from any and all threats he could think of, not to mention plenty of resources to help them with anything they might need. But the other part of his brain can’t stop seeing his own past and all the terrible things that have happened to him even despite his careful planning. Sometimes he thinks that everything he puts his hands on is cursed to go horribly wrong.

Rhodey clearly sees something in his expression, because he’s bending down even more to be at eye level, and Tony can’t avoid making eye contact. “What’s bringing this on?” Rhodey asks gently.

With practically anyone else, Tony wouldn’t tell, he knows it. But this is Rhodey, who knows his secrets and his stupid irrational fears and his real, serious fears, and who was there through all of this and never abandoned him, who he trusts with his heart and his arc reactor and his suit. The only person on Earth he would have wanted to take with him to this new planet and new life, through all the difficulties that he knows are coming.

He does look away, unable to look Rhodey in the eyes when he says it. Trying, not very successfully but as much as he can manage, to hide how much this fear is affecting him. “Obie,” he manages, and that’s all he needs.

Rhodey draws in a long breath and lets it out slowly. Then he lets go of Tony’s shoulders and moves to sit next to him on the bed, pressing his knee and his elbow into Tony’s. The contact is good, keeps him calm. 

“Stane was a fucking psychopath,” Rhodey starts, and Tony makes an involuntary noise and shakes his head. “I’m not saying Ross isn’t,” Rhodey adds before Tony can say anything, once again knowing what Tony is thinking before he can give voice to it, “but Obadiah didn’t have the same oversight Ross does. That bastard got away with what he did for so long because he spent years manipulating _you_ into giving him the power and the freedom he wanted. There are too many people watching Ross now, and some of them are yours. He would never get away with the kind of outright shit Stane did. The sneaky business shit, sure, but not the ‘building a gigantic death suit and then trying to murder people’ shit.”

Tony knows that too. He knows that Obie didn’t just lose his mind overnight. He spent years, probably decades, building up his power and authority in the company, and grooming Tony to be susceptible to his manipulation, his guilt trips, and his subtle power plays. Making sure Tony was as oblivious as possible, looking the other way and always naïvely trusting Obie. Never suspicious. 

And Tony was different then, too. He thinks sometimes, with no small amount of shame, that most of the other people he knows would never have been caught the way Tony was by Obie. They’d have been stronger, more suspicious of him, less easily manipulated. Looking back now, he can see how uncomfortable he _should_ have been about the way Obie was always getting into his space, touching him, pulling him too close. He can’t imagine Pepper or Rhodey putting up with that, or at least not being more suspicious about it.

He’s changed since then. He never would have let Ross get away with anything like that, and though it’s not like Ross ever tried to make any _personal_ gestures, Tony’s also become more savvy and better at recognizing the sneaky, sleazy back-alley handshakes and shady business deals. He knows when someone is trying to screw him over professionally as well as personally and he likes to think that after learning from experience, he would have recognized if Ross showed the same signs of being a violent warmongering psychopath that Obie had.

Rhodey must sense Tony relaxing—that or Tony’s been silent long enough that he’s given up on saying more—because he suddenly reaches over to lay a comforting hand on Tony’s knee for a second, then rises to his feet. He holds out a hand and Tony can’t help the way his mouth quirks up at the unspoken question. He takes the offered hand, but still puts one of his own on the bed behind him to push himself up, not actually using Rhodey’s assistance. Rhodey smiles at him and lets his hand go. They have a whole conversation in those moments, no words needed.

The only person Tony would want to leave the planet with. Damn right. Tony tries to hide his smile. “You’re right,” he says quietly, just to be sure Rhodey knows that he’s not going to try to fling himself off the ship and back to Earth any time soon.

“Of course I am, I’m always right,” Rhodey says, with just enough exaggerated swagger that Tony snorts and punches him in the shoulder.

“Okay then, Mr. Right-All-The-Time, just for that, you get to be the one to ask Amilie how to work the shower if we can’t figure it out ourselves.” And he laughs at Rhodey’s wide-eyed look. It’s going to be a fun journey.


	4. Chapter 4

Slowly, the distant sound of a shrill alarm penetrates Rhodey’s consciousness. He wakes grudgingly, reaching automatically for his own phone on the bedside table, then groans when touching the surface doesn’t stop the sound.

He forces himself to open his eyes, glaring in the direction of the device in question. He’s still mostly asleep and, as he has been for the last week, very disgruntled about being forced into consciousness at what his body seems to think is a completely inappropriate time to be awake.

As he wakes up a little more, he finally realizes that the alarm is quiet, far away, and the reason his touch wasn’t turning it off is that it isn’t his alarm. Frowning, he climbs out of bed, trying to convince his brain to wake up a little more.

When his bedroom door opens as he approaches it, the sound of the alarm grows louder. He finally regains enough higher functions to conclude that it’s Tony’s alarm, coming from the room down the hall, and just as he realizes this, Tony’s voice comes from behind the other door, louder than the alarm.

“Fuck!”

Rhodey can’t even bring himself to laugh, at this point. He absolutely understands what’s going on, and the only reason he’s not currently in the same situation is that the group he’s been introduced to isn’t meeting for four more hours today.

The alarm finally shuts off, and Rhodey makes his way to the kitchen, hearing more muffled swearing from behind Tony’s door as he goes. He shakes his head and starts the not-coffee machine, knowing Tony will need it as soon as possible.

When they came to Tolsar, they were fully prepared—as much as they reasonably could be, at least—for extreme changes. They’ve been trying their best to roll with those, to adjust to this new life in the week they’ve been here. They expected life to be different in big ways, from their jobs to their home to the people they shared the planet with. What they weren’t as prepared for were some of the smaller things. Things they wouldn’t have thought about before.

Like the fact that they were moving to a planet with only one other Earth-born human occupying it. Amilie had introduced, or at least procured for herself, a number of Earthly comforts and items over her years on Tolsar, and she was happy to share them with Tony and Rhodey as soon as they arrived. She’d had a number of “human” designs integrated into the home they now occupied together before they even arrived, and they definitely appreciated it.

But she’s just one person, and as a result, everything here is catered to her tastes. Rhodey thinks, of all the alien things about this planet, the biggest shock for Tony so far was learning that their human host doesn’t drink coffee, and therefore there’s none to be found anywhere on Tolsar.

There is, thankfully, an almost-equivalent, something that Rhodey has guessed is closer to alien tea than coffee but is certainly chock full of some synthetic compound close enough to caffeine to fuel Tony’s addiction. And Rhodey’s too, not that he’ll admit it when he’s in the same room as Tony, who’s practically useless without it. Particularly since arriving and discovering their other big, unanticipated problem.

“It should be three in the morning,” Tony announces as he walks into the room, clearly highly offended by the fact. “I’ve done some of my best work at three in the morning, but not with other people. That is not meeting time. That is genius idea time. Or sleep time. This is insane.”

He grabs the mug of not-coffee that Rhodey has set out for him and drinks half of it in one go, setting it down more forcefully than necessary just to glare around the room.

Rhodey shakes his head. “I keep telling you, man, keeping track like that is just going to make it worse. You’re never going to adjust if you keep telling your body it’s a different time.”

Tony throws his hands up, exasperated. “I’m not doing it on purpose. My brain makes these calculations automatically. It’s like knowing how old you are. I can’t just turn it off.”

He says it like a demand for answers, or for Rhodey to find a solution. Which, of course, he can’t, but he can still be sarcastic. He’s suffering too, for fuck’s sake. “Well, maybe you should go ask Amilie if she can change the planet’s rotation for you.” At least it comes out teasing and not truly irritated. He doesn’t need to be pissing Tony off when he’s in this mood.

“Probably be easier than dealing with this,” Tony grumbles, but he settles back against the counter, chugging the rest of his not-coffee and sticking the mug back underneath the machine for more. Rhodey considers telling him not to ingest too much of the stuff without food in his stomach—a warning he got from the friendly neighbor who gave it to them—but figures Tony will just drink more to spite him if he does.

“Well, she did say it took her at least two weeks to adjust, give it more time,” Rhodey says, to an expected roll of Tony’s eyes.

“Yeah, yeah. In the meantime I’ll just go fall asleep over my work and all these people will think I’m even _more_ incompetent.”

“You’re not incompetent,” Rhodey says firmly, though he knows it’s not really necessary. Tony knows his own intelligence and he regards tech he doesn’t understand as a challenge, not a judgment on his own worth. Still, he’s trying hard to impress people here, for good reason, and Rhodey’s been picking things up from bits of conversation that he doesn’t like. “Mendiel still being an ass to you?”

Tony waves a dismissive hand just a touch too casually, and Rhodey narrows his eyes, suspicious. “He’s always an ass, it’s just his personality. Or maybe it’s some Feldorian thing. I haven’t exactly asked the others.”

“My people have been easing me in, starting slow,” Rhodey says cautiously, testing the waters.

Tony gives him a look that says he knows exactly what Rhodey’s doing. “So have mine, for the most part. I’m the one pushing it. And I told you, the rest of them are fine. It’s just Mendiel, and I can deal with one asshole. I’ve dealt with plenty of them before.”

Rhodey grimaces. It’s not like he thought this would be some kind of magical place where everything was perfect and they lived happily ever after with no effort whatsoever, but he still hates hearing that Tony’s not being treated right. He understands the complexities here—at least some of them—and knows that their situation is a little unusual to say the least, so he does try to be understanding. But it doesn’t stop him from wishing everyone could respect Tony a little more.

“Gotta be there in ten minutes,” Tony says, sighing dramatically and finishing off his refilled mug. “See you later. Tonight, whenever the hell that is.”

Rhodey chuckles and waves Tony out the door. He considers going back to bed, but he wants to take advantage of actually being awake to get some more reading done. There’s a ridiculous amount to read just to catch up on some of the tech basics here, and though he’s pretty damn good with engineering, he doesn’t have Tony’s natural intuitive abilities. He’s also barely touched on the history of Tolsar or the basics of how the society works—he started on the way here, during their week-long journey, but then dropped everything in favor of focusing on tech when they arrived and he was immediately introduced to a team he’d be working with for the time being.

He gets to his reading, settling into the comfortable little nook in the corner of what he considers their living room, but after about an hour, his eyes start to droop and he curses to himself. After a few more attempts, each with the same result, he gives up and returns to his room, setting his own alarm for half an hour before he’s expected to meet his team today.

It’s like jetlag from hell. Tolsar, as it turns out, has a 32 hour rotation cycle, and despite Amilie’s warning, neither of them realized just how difficult it would be to adjust.

With so many different species living together on one planet, there’s no way to expect them all to be synchronized, which is the only thing working in their favor right now. There are aliens here who barely sleep at all, those who sleep in small increments throughout the day, those who stay awake for weeks at a time and then crash for two or three days at once, and everything in between. Most are awake during the day, but there are also some people here naturally evolved to be awake at night.

What it means is that different teams of people work at different times, according to their own natural schedules. But Rhodey and Tony have both been temporarily assigned to tech work with teams of people on generally the same schedule as them. Their teams have been understanding, at least, some of them having moved to Tolsar from their own home planets and had the same adjustment period.

It still isn’t quite the same for most of the others, though. Rhodey and Tony learned from Amilie on the way here that most people in the connected galaxy these days are used to space travel. They’re used to artificial day and night cycles that change constantly, and a change like this doesn’t bother them as much.

It just highlights the differences between their old life and this one, and how they’re perceived by the people around them. On Earth, Rhodey was used to at least generally being respected as a soldier and an engineer. Tony, of course, was widely recognized as a genius at the forefront of technological innovation. And Rhodey has no doubt that he’ll find his own niche here, and Tony will definitely figure everything out quickly and once again show himself to be a genius.

But Tony’s never been looked down on just on principle before, because of where he comes from. And for Rhodey, it’s been a long time. He hasn’t had that feeling since he joined the military. In school as a kid, he encountered more than his fair share of racism. And then, when he went to MIT, he was sneered at by a number of the legacy students because he was from a relatively poor family and had no academic or political connections. But he worked hard to gain respect and recognition, and eventually, he was awarded that, and his skin color and his background didn’t matter as much.

If anything, Tony has always had the opposite problem. Expectations have followed him his whole life; his father’s unrealistic Captain America-shaped ideals, his godfather’s expectations that he would continue and improve weapons manufacturing, the world’s expectations that he would surpass his father’s genius and push them into the future. No one ever bothered to ask Tony what he wanted to do, whether he liked the path his father set out for him, or how he felt about the way his life was practically decided for him.

Now, they have a strange and upsetting mix of both pressing on them. On the one hand, they’re here on the personal invitation of the queen, who vouched for them and submitted their applications for citizenship for them. They’re expected to live up to that honor. 

Yet, at the same time, they’re from Earth. From what they’re learning, practically any of the planets in this connected galaxy would be considered advanced compared to Earth, but Tolsar is something else. It’s a collection of the most advanced beings from around the galaxy, and to them, Earth is back in the Stone Age. It’s a backwater planet full of apes who can barely manage to get themselves into orbit around their own world, who can’t figure out how to feed their own people, who destroy their own natural resources without a plan for renewing them, and wage wars on each other over practically nothing.

Rhodey can tell from working with his team that they’re trying hard to give him a chance. Unlike Tony’s problems with this Mendiel, Rhodey’s team has been entirely polite to him, trying to walk him slowly through the theories and physics of what they use here. He supposes it’s better than being treated badly, but on the other hand, he does feel constantly patronized.

It’s getting better, of course. Rhodey’s learning fast and he can see that his team’s belief in him is solidifying as they see him grasp difficult concepts quickly. And he knows very well that Tony will be impressing the hell out of his own team soon enough. He just has to give it more time. They are, after all, trying to settle into an entirely new life, unusual to them in pretty much every aspect. Everything will work out if he’s patient enough.

And in the meantime, he desperately needs some more sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please forgive my utter lack of mechanical knowledge, combined with my attempts to make things sound spacey and futuristic.

Tony’s been silently working on dismantling an accelerated textile processor for about an hour when he notices a familiar tingling feeling. He’s being watched, and it’s by someone who disapproves of whatever he’s doing. Memories of Howard doing the same thing come back far too easily.

He glances up from his work, then restrains himself from rolling his eyes with difficulty. Mendiel is glaring at him through his own projected calculations. At least, Tony assumes he’s glaring, from the intensity of his gaze and the darker hue around those unblinking eyes that Tony has interpreted as anger. Can someone without eyelids even glare?

He’s distracted enough by his own thoughts that he’s staring, apparently, because Mendiel suddenly sweeps aside the screen between himself and Tony and glares harder. “Need something?” Tony asks, giving a token effort at sounding genuinely curious, but knowing it comes out sarcastic.

“You looking for something else to do? Don’t tell me you’re still working on that processor. It’s just _basic_ components.”

Tony bristles. He knows he’s being baited, and that Mendiel’s just being an ass for whatever reason, but he’s never been one to back down from a challenge. Never let them see you struggle. He defers to cockiness, letting his mouth quirk up into a sharp smirk. “What else have you got?”

Mendiel waves at his screens and then sweeps a stubby limb in Tony’s direction, and one of his own projects appears up on Tony’s workstation. “This auditory dampening system developed a bug yesterday, I just haven’t had time to get to fixing it yet. I’m sure you can figure it out.”

Tony frowns at the complex projection up in front of him. “I haven’t seen any of the functioning auditory systems yet.”

Even through the medium of the translator—which is, admittedly, incredibly sophisticated, going as far as to translate cultural idioms into compatible ones in other languages, and when Tony understands more about the basics he is absolutely going to take one apart—the mocking in Mendiel’s tone is clear. “You’re saying you’re giving up already, you can’t figure this out? You need to be walked through the simple stuff first?”

“Of course not,” Tony bluffs smoothly, adopting an unaffected air. “But I assume you want it back the way it was in the first place. Who knows, I could change the way it functions entirely.”

“On Tolsar we always welcome any _real_ improvements to our systems,” Mendiel says, clearly calling his bluff.

Before Tony can try to come up with a retort, two of their team return from their break. “Mendiel, there’s food for you in the front,” Laiin says, and Mendiel abandons his staring contest with Tony to close down his workstation and slither off to his lunch.

Laiin and Loren are a couple from Diinovar IV, not that that means much to Tony, who’s still very new to the wider galaxy. He wonders sometimes whether he has some sort of natural inclination to like them and dislike Mendiel because of their physical appearances, if that’s some sort of space racism, and whether that means it’s his own fault that Mendiel is such a dick to him.

Laiin and Loren are fairly humanoid, a little longer limbed and differently shaped, but they’d probably be considered aesthetically pleasing to most humans. Mendiel better resembles a cross between a scorpion and a Hutt. Where the Diinovarians’ skin is a soft, pale cyan that reminds Tony of the oceans back home, Mendiel’s is a pebbled, muddy mix of browns and greens that reminds Tony more of vomit. And while the sounds of their voices are partly manufactured by his translator and can’t truly be attributed to them, Laiin and Loren’s come across like any normal human strangers, whereas Tony could swear on anything that Mendiel’s words inhabit the auditory imprint of Justin Hammer.

“How are things coming along?” Laiin asks as they approach Tony’s workstation. Tony sweeps aside the project Mendiel just gave him and returns to the gutted bits of the textile processor.

“I think I’m getting the patterns in how the spatial inhibitors have to be set up,” Tony says. “Thanks for letting me take things apart. It’s the same basic setup as all of the manufacturing equipment, at least at the smallest level of hardware.”

Loren looks pleased. “Glad to see you’re getting it! I also prefer to handle things physically rather than holographically. It just gives me better perspective.” They pick up the output modulator and examine it. “Did you put this back together?”

“How’d you know?” Tony squints at it, wondering if he put something in the wrong place.

Loren shows it to Laiin, smiling. “You re-crossed the outflow circuits. That’ll double the draw on the input and production would end up twice as fast.”

Tony takes the modulator back and turns it upside down to see the circuits in question. “Oh. Did it without thinking. But why can’t you just do the same with the inflow? Problem solved.”

Laiin leans over to pull up the interface on Tony’s station, scrolling through to find the schematics of the whole assembly and selecting the parts to demonstrate to Tony. “It’s not the inflow that’s the problem, it’s the design and detailing specifications.”

Tony leans in to examine the holographic schematics with interest while Loren goes on. “I didn’t even think about the specifics when I gave it to you, but the one you’ve got is only used for the Cindaran armor weave. The fabrication process requires their reflective natural minerals be combined into each cross-point of the fabric itself. The material is input in a liquid form, and crystal formation takes a certain amount of time that can’t be changed.”

“So the entire process has to be slowed to accommodate it,” Tony says, leaning back and nodding to himself. “And instead of trying to force a slowdown at a point that could backup or break down, you just cross the outflow circuits. Natural choke point in energy flow, it’s forced to double back on itself. Every time you start it up, you just have to wait a single cycle and it’s already slowed itself every time.”

“And that single cycle is built into this one.” Loren demonstrates on the hologram. “The feed is delayed by a single cycle, the first one running empty both to create the energy backflow and to test it before production. If there’s anything off with the flow from the first cycle, the sensor at the integration point will stop the process.”

Laiin laughs and puts a hand on Tony’s shoulder. “I didn’t think we’d be getting into this much detail yet. You really are good. If you want, I’ll bring in one of the sensors and you can take that apart. Of course, then we have to start getting into the coding stuff.”

“Been looking forward to it,” Tony says with a grin. He can’t help the glow of satisfaction at the praise. They’ve been more than kind to him so far, telling him to take his time learning all the basics here, but he’s still felt a drive to prove himself to him that comes from somewhere a lot deeper than just Mendiel’s sneering disbelief.

Speaking of which… “Have to get into the coding anyway, or I’ll have to listen to Mendiel call me an idiot for the next foreseeable _ever_ over this auditory dampening thing.”

“What?” Loren and Laiin ask together, and Tony flicks a hand to expand the work Mendiel sent over to him. Loren leans in and makes an angry noise. “What’s this?”

Tony shrugs, not sure how much to tell them. He doesn’t exactly want to admit that he took up Mendiel on his ridiculous challenge like a posturing high school boy, but he’d also like to be able to rise to the challenge nonetheless. “Mendiel gave it to me just a few minutes ago and asked if I could figure it out. Sounds like he’s busy.” He carefully phrases it like it was a perfectly innocent request rather than a mocking dare, but Laiin and Loren still make annoyed sounds and exchange looks over Tony’s shoulder.

“Our entire auditory system’s structuring is in flux right now, there’s another team trying to integrate new tech into it. This system developed a bug because the first stage of the integration ran into unexpected problems. We don’t even know what’s wrong with it, and we’re not the primary team fixing it anyway, they just sent the info on to everyone in case anyone has an idea,” Loren says.

Laiin makes another frustrated noise. “This is nothing you should be dealing with yet and Mendiel knows it. Why would he tell you to do this?”

Tony bites his lip, trying to figure out a way to tell them about his problem with Mendiel without sounding like either a complete moron or a little kid running to the teacher after another kid pushed him on the playground. Before he can, though, Laiin makes a noise that Tony assumes is meant to be a sigh.

“We’re sorry about Mendiel. We hoped he wouldn’t be causing you too much trouble, but sometimes he can be… difficult. It’s not your fault you’re new to everything here.”

Tony’s stomach drops. So they have noticed something wrong with their interactions. Has he really been that obvious in his dislike of Mendiel? He could swear that when they met, Mendiel’s appearance didn’t bother him in the least, it was just another fascinating new alien thing to learn about on Tolsar. He’s fairly sure that Mendiel was rude and obnoxious to him right from the beginning, but maybe he’s projecting.

“Has he said anything to you? About me?” Tony hedges, still hoping to save face while he gleans more information. The answer, however, surprises him.

“Not since you got here,” Loren says. “He’s pretending it’s okay now, at least around the rest of us, but he’s not doing a very good job.”

Tony frowns at that. “What, he didn’t like me before I even got here?”

“As soon as we found out one of the new people was being assigned to this team,” Laiin answers, sounding exasperated, “he had an attitude about it. He’s always been bitter about newcomers.”

“Don’t mind him,” Loren says, “he’s a planet-born and he nearly didn’t make it through his own application. He’s had a problem with outside applicants ever since. They’re not all like that.”

“His application?” Tony asks, then, when they look surprised, hurriedly adds, “I studied up on the way here, but it’s all—all new.”

“Oh, of course,” Laiin reassures, and Tony relaxes a fraction. He doesn’t want to insult anyone, or look any more like an ignorant human who blundered here to Tolsar with no real qualifications and doesn’t deserve the recommendation from the queen that got him here. But it’s impossible to avoid just how much he doesn’t know, and sometimes he has to ask.

“You’ve had it hard, being cut off from, well, everything,” Laiin continues. “I can’t imagine coming here from a totally isolated planet. That’s amazing.”

“Really,” Loren adds at Tony’s disbelieving expression, “don’t let Mendiel’s attitude make you think we all see you that way. Your application wouldn’t have been accepted by the Council if you didn’t deserve a place here. And you’re learning incredibly fast, making amazing progress.”

Tony smiles a little at that and gets one in return. “Anyway, planet-born,” Laiin says. “You know all the people who live here have to apply for citizenship and be accepted by the Council. If a child is born here, or brought by a parent who’s accepted, then they live here freely until they reach adulthood.”

“Like a certain age? Is there a cutoff?” Tony asks.

Laiin shakes their head. “Not specifically. Every culture is different, and sometimes even the same species has different ideas of what constitutes adulthood depending on where they come from or their own customs.” Tony nods at that, knowing it’s similar back on Earth, among various humans.

“It’s a relatively loose rule, but there’s generally a clear period, and most children who grow up here are eager to prove themselves.” Here, Laiin hesitates, and Loren steps in.

“There’s a… view, among some people here, that children who grow up on the planet are living on the privilege of their parents.”

Tony tenses at that. He doesn’t want to infer the wrong thing, and he knows every society has its problems, but he doesn’t like the idea of children being seen as… freeloaders. “You mean that they don’t deserve their place here?”

Loren looks taken aback. “No! Nothing so cruel. Children here are given every advantage and opportunity the planet offers. But there’s an expectation that because of the advancements on Tolsar, children will be able to thrive and rise above what they would achieve if they’d grown up on their home planets. They have to apply for citizenship when they reach adulthood, and there are some people—”

“—Like Mendiel,” Laiin interjects, and Loren nods.

“People like Mendiel, who feel that the Council has unfairly high expectations on planet-born applicants, and that outside applicants have an easier time being accepted.”

“Oh,” Tony says, frowning while he thinks that over. “Weird. I mean, where I come from, you’d expect the opposite. That anyone trying to join a group from the outside would have a harder time than someone who’s already in.”

“But Tolsar is built on the idea of bringing together the best minds from around the galaxy,” Laiin says, “and the diversity of ideas that comes from reaching out to far different people. A lot of people here think that isolation and stagnation of culture stifle innovation and creativity. No one has a problem with children growing up and earning their place here, but the idea of Tolsar accepting mostly, or entirely, its own planet-born as citizens instead of bringing in outsiders is generally seen as something to be avoided to most people here.”

“That does make sense,” Tony admits.

“There’s some truth to it,” Laiin says. “The expectations are high on planet-borns. It’s why we’ve considered moving to have our own children.” Laiin and Loren touch hands, something Tony’s seen them do before to greet each other—he’s interpreted it like a kiss on the cheek to a human.

“Moving?” Tony asks, curious, but hoping he’s not intruding.

Loren nods. “It’s a great place to raise a child, without doubt, and they would have every opportunity and advantage that the planet offers. But as we’ve said, the expectations are high, and not everyone meets them. Some people simply do not excel in any one area, and there are planet-born children whose applications for citizenship are denied.” 

“Sometimes their parents move away with them, sometimes they set out on their own,” Laiin continues. “In either scenario, it must be devastating for the child. They may feel abandoned if they’re forced to leave the planet and their family doesn’t accompany them. Yet, if their parents do leave with them, they may feel guilty about making them leave Tolsar.”

Tony can’t imagine. He thinks he’d be terrified of raising a child here, worried about the possibility that they wouldn’t qualify as a citizen and he’d face an impossible choice.

“Some are confident that their children will excel here,” Loren says, “and for some, the choice to leave will not be difficult if their children are not granted citizenship. There are also some people whose cultures consider their children no longer part of the family once they reach adulthood; those people are not concerned with the problem, of course.”

Laiin nods and touches Loren’s hand again. “But some choose to leave the planet to raise children. They have to reapply for citizenship if they want to come back, but it’s usually easier if they’ve already lived on Tolsar. When their children are grown, they will apply for themselves, and if they’re not accepted, then the family will simply remain where it is. That way also offers the chance to wait longer before the children apply. They may need longer than the beginning of adulthood to prove themselves.”

“Sounds… difficult,” Tony says with genuine sympathy. He considers what he’s heard and feels a little guilty about his assumptions about Mendiel. “Thank you for teaching me about some of this. I really didn’t know anything coming here… I can see why Mendiel would resent me for it, if he grew up with that constant expectation and then I came waltzing in here knowing nothing.” Privately, Tony thinks he knows a thing or two about that sort of feeling.

Laiin and Loren, however, shake their heads in unison. “It is not your fault, or your responsibility to ease his own insecurities. He’ll be kinder to you with time. You’re already doing very well. And eventually, when you’re settled in here completely, he’ll forget you were ever an outsider.” Loren says it with such confidence, Tony can’t help but believe them. “We’re still sorry that you have to deal with his rudeness.”

Tony’s the one to shake his head this time, a hint of a smile grazing his face. “Don’t apologize for him. And please, don’t make trouble over this, not for me. I’ve dealt with way worse than him, it’s really not an issue. He’s just… keeping me on my toes.” Once again, he doesn’t see the look they exchange over his head, but he’s already clearing his station of the disassembled parts and leaning forward eagerly. “Now, about that sensor you promised me…”


End file.
